| Chapter : | Introduction |
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As a novelist, however, Dreiser was interested in portraying the human condition as it was, and for him this included the world's beauty as well as its ugliness. Dreiser's earliest philosophical leanings show him to be continuously contemplating the tension between the beauty and peace inherent in a larger natural order and the ugliness and decay that accompany the circumstances of man's existence. He reflects in his autobiography Dawn, “I have…thought that for all my modest repute as a realist, I seem, to my self-analyzing eyes, somewhat more of a romanticist than a realist” (198). It has been difficult, however, for scholars to reconcile Dreiser's romantic tendencies with his deep roots in realism and naturalism, and therefore, seeing these elements as odd intrusions into otherwise typical, even ideal, novels of realism and naturalism, have made only passing remarks about them. However, more recent criticism on the restored Jennie Gerhardt and the restored Sister Carrie argue that Dreiser's fiction, at least his restored fiction, exhibits strong characteristics of romanticism and naturalism. In other words, Dreiser can be seen as both a romantic and a naturalist. Judith Kucharski, for instance, states that the romantic elements in the restored Jennie Gerhardt are not strange anomalies, but representations of “a sensibility that was not an idiosyncratic deviation but that persisted throughout his life” (25). Valerie Ross adds that critics “in search of hopelessness are likely to miss the underlying subtleties and beauties, the knot of interests and emotions that [Dreiser] so brilliantly and painstakingly analyzes in [the restored] Jennie Gerhardt” (39). Yoshinobu Hakutani, in his essay on the restored Sister Carrie, states that “Dreiser has more affinity with a romantic naturalist like Frank Norris than a realist” and that the restored text reveals that the novel is “less realistic than usually perceived…” (26, 30).
Dreiser, in his original manuscript, expresses the tension he himself felt between the beauty and goodness he saw in a larger natural order and in some persons, and the desperation, greed, selfishness, and poverty that people so often confront and embody. In his original manuscript, Dreiser's characters are confronted with and respond to these various forces. Thus, the restored novel becomes a rich mixture of romanticism, realism, and naturalism. Kucharski states that it is “the fullest expression